Digital Tart

Going Down

The flurry of activity at CyberLine filled the afternoon
and early evening. While they waited for the system programmers,
Medway took over the terminal and quickly entered the rest of the
serial numbers of interest. Under cover of that, she inserted an echo
which used CyberLine’s own system to send a copy of all the files
and activities to the police net. Their sentry systems were less
likely to spot that than if she routed all the transmissions through
her own processors – in theory. She had found clear signs that all
of her transmissions were being monitored and the more data she
provided in the form of comms activity, the more chance of police
encryption being compromised.

By seven-thirty it was all over. The trails didn’t so
much go dead as hit a wall. The false data was still there and the
point of interference obvious – and ridiculous.

"Catering?" Tarbuck grumbled yet again.

"Records have been modified by the catering
system," one of the programmers explained slowly. Again.
"There is no reason why these transactions should go through
there. There is no record of how it happened."

"Crazy." Tarbuck had the look again am I
gonna die?Is my career in flames? "The new computers
have been there over a year. If there was something that badly wrong,
surely someone would have noticed by now?"

"There is one other possibility," the engineer
conceded. "Another system made the false entries and then
mimicked the audit trail to lead to the catering systems."

"And how do we trace that?" Medway was losing
patience – soft and quiet was infuriatingly slow after the
initial door-kicking success.

"No way to do it. Not without shutting everything
down – overloading the system with tracer programs."

Medway shifted in her seat. She had kept her armour on
and it wasn’t designed to be worn for such extended periods. That
incision scar on her belly was aching all the more. "Any
guesses?"

"None," the man said wearily.

"One," suggested a quiet, plump lad - the most
junior in the team. "Mil App."

It was as if someone had pumped the room full of cotton
wool. Every last sound was leached from the air. Medway tried to just
listen, because even her best soft and quiet would be too loud
in that moment.

"Mil App," the senior system engineer agreed
wearily. "Covert logins, false trails, silent edits. All the
sort of thing that Mil App ought to be good at."

"Head of security has been monitoring us. He has
cleared me to take you into the Military Applications Centre to
pursue your enquiries."

"So co-operative," Medway muttered darkly –
so their security manager had been monitoring, but only intervened
once it became clear there was something seriously wrong. It had the
smell of secrecy hiding behind a façade of openness – cover-up and
damage-limitation running the show. A sniper hiding in a doorway.

No worries there... Medway opened a channel.

<Medway: $$ encrypt/3 $$ This stinks. Recommend we
abort enquiries.>

<Porson: Wait while we assess.>

"Worrying," she said aloud. "Does your
security guy think we will be safe going in there? If someone has
been playing with your computers…"

"Risk is low," Tarbuck assured her.

<Porson: Proceed with caution. They know that
we know you’re there.>

"OK. Lead the way, Ms Tarbuck."

"Really? You don’t want to go first?” After
hours of smooth corporate cooperation, Tarbuck let loose a tirade of
bitter sarcasm. "Cybercop hiding in an armoured shell, carrying
a whole stack of weapons.”

Medway
reached for her gun, the tiniest movement on reflex. Single
threat, no visible weapon... think before you shoot... Kyla was
there, behind her shoulder, giving advice. Look before you
think...

Tarbuck, just a
corporate executive in the monied safety of an office, not a yob from
the worst of the subsistence enclaves, holding a brick. But she saw
that reach for the gun, recognised it, reacted to it on a matching
reflex...

”Are you sure
you don’t need to wait for backup?" Tarbuck threw sarcasm
not bricks, but the taunt and challenge was the same. The yobs
either lobbed the brick, or dropped it and ran, giving the cop the
matching choice, shoot or chase. A bleeding-heart rookie might
chase; an experienced hand would shoot – no telling when a yob with
a brick was just bait in a trap.

Medway stayed silent. That look, that stance – it
wasn’t just flashback and imagination. The reaction, the freeze
in response to a cybercop
reaching for a gun... classic yob stand-off, don’t provoke the
cybercop any further until you’re ready. Wherever Tarbuck
came from, she knew yobs with bricks, and mobs with fire-bombs hiding
round the corner, and this was just a piece of theatre because the
corporate executive wasn’t expecting any hostile reception...

Tarbuck was too far removed from her roots, playing with
memories that no longer mattered. In Medway’s life, mobs and
fire-bombs were still waiting to ambush the bleeding-heart rookie.

<Porson: Just be ready for a fire-fight and try not
to get the civilian killed.>

<Medway: $$ encrypt/3 $$ This is NOTgoing to be a fire-fight.> There was no reply from Porson –
so much for light duties.

Lameduck lived up to its name with a full performance of
the creaking door routine. Medway ignored it as casually as possible
and strapped herself into the safety restraints.

"Not expecting an accident?" Tarbuck laughed,
eyeing up the heavy duty harness on the passenger seat.

"Regulations." Medway wasn’t expecting
anything as benign as an accident. "The car will not move
until all passengers are safely strapped in. I can override it, but
then it will scream panic signals all over the police nets."
That wasn’t entirely true, but if things did get rough it would be
stupid to have a passenger rattling around in the car.

Tarbuck snapped the catches into place and Medway backed
the car out of its parking space. <Medway: Set for hostile
environment. Direct and immediate threat to life.>

"Here’s a tough question for you, Ms Tarbuck...”
How would you feel if your belly ached where the surgeons rinsed
out corrosive crap and put new batteries in? “Do you trust
your employers?"

"Of course." She sounded irritated. "You
think that this has been sanctioned by the Board? I admit that it is
disturbing to learn that there has clearly been a breach of the
regulations. And it might be an employee... but CyberLine
would never knowingly do such a thing."

"I hope you’re right. If I’m
right, there could be a very hostile reception waiting for us."
But Porson did give the OK...

"How hostile?"

"Shoot to kill sort of hostile. Directed at me.”
With a civilian in the firing line... not a good moment to start
doubting Porson... “For your sake I hope they can shoot straight."

They drew up to the gates of the Military Applications
compound, an array of small workshops and manufacturing facilities
clustered around a conventional steel, concrete and glass block. To
one side was the grey bulk of a fully enclosed, secure freight depot.
Another guard waited patiently while the window wound down and
Tarbuck’s identity was confirmed through his despatch centre. The
whole scene played out in brilliant floodlighting, washing out the
dying moments of the sunset.

"This is dead wrong, Miss," the man grumbled.
"Computer says OK, though." The armoured gate rolled open
and the guard stepped aside. Medway closed Lameduck’s windows and
drove in – she was damned sure there was something wrong and wanted
bullet-resistant glass between her and trouble.

Alarms started to shrill inside the car. A stream of
status warnings flooded from Lameduck and Medway returned the car to
automatic.

"Might be innocent..." Medway skimmed through
the list. "There are some heavy duty sentry systems scanning the
car – including invasive system queries." A new and serious
warning appeared on one of her internal status reports. "Very
heavy.” What had Morrison said – CyberLine could put together an
accurate profile of every functioning cybercop? “Enough to
compromise a factory-fresh Peacekeeper..."

<Medway: Lameduck, confirm all system passwords were
modified before you entered service.>

<Porson: Relax, Officer Medway. This will be far less
painful if you surrender now.>

The MilApps floodlights went out and the compound
softened into the last of the sunset. Whatever came next would be
fought by the light of infra-red and radar.

Active countermeasure alarms fed through from Lameduck.
All external communications were dead and it was likely that the
interference would block the distress alarms. Systems switched
automatically and every spare scrap of bandwidth was absorbed in
exchanging evidence logs between Medway and the car. If only one of
them survived with electronics intact there would be a full record
available.

Armour-penetrating rounds clipped the tailgate,
triggering alerts from the shielding around the fuel tank. Lameduck
accelerated abruptly, braked and turned sharply between two
buildings; more armour-penetrating rounds tore up the road surface
behind them. Medway silenced all of the alarms and checked that none
of the stress warnings exceeded tolerances.

"They’re trying to kill you," Tarbuck said
faintly.

"Trying to kill us," Medway corrected.
"No witnesses. There will be a follow-up investigation…"
Her voice settled into a calm recitation. “During the ongoing
investigation, a shoot-out between Officer Medway and rogue elements
at CyberLine caused extensive damage to computer systems and most of
the vital records were lost. Officer Medway was regrettably killed in
the fight… you can figure out the rest."

"We’re going to die."

"Depends," Medway answered as Lameduck headed
for the fence. "How good is the decryption facility here?"

High velocity penetrating rounds scattered off the front
of the car. Lameduck was built to withstand this level of assault for
short periods. Very short. And it was only equipped for light duties
– no tyre-poppers, mortars or barricade-busters, just a magazine of
concussion grenades for basic crowd control. Medway interfaced her
targeting processors to the launchers and fired three rounds to
explode beneath her armoured opponent in quick succession.

The Bulldog retreated abruptly. The concussion charges
couldn’t penetrate, but the crew didn’t know that. The noise for
those trapped inside would have been terrifying, with no easy way to
distinguish harmless crowd control from lethal penetrating ordnance.

"Are we going to die?" Tarbuck whispered.

Another Bulldog appeared, running almost parallel and
then side-swiping Lameduck, the impact sending the car into a low
wall dividing the road from a building. The warnings ranged from
minor to severe as the grazing impact began to erode the
fibre-toughened armour. Tarbuck screamed again; concrete shards
exploded from the wall and showered over her side of the wind-shield.

The Bulldog came in for another pass, swerving sharply
to grind them into the wall and open up the side of the car. Lameduck
pushed its gas turbine to the limit, red-line warnings screaming
audibly as well as directly into Medway’s processors. The
acceleration pushed both passengers into their seats; the Bulldog
ploughed into the wall. The armoured monster rode out the impact and
chased them with another hail of piercing rounds.

"We’re not going to make it." Medway was
calm in the face of impending failure. This was combat, a part of the
job. "Just as well. They would suspend me for putting a civilian
at risk."

Medway turned every spare bit of capacity to analysing
the data. It was sparse, a basic plan the CyberLine security chief
had sent to Tarbuck with the permission to enter the MilApps
compound. "Perfect. Hold tight."

Lameduck turned, briefly losing the pursuing Bulldog.
The best interpretation of the available radar returns suggested
another two hostile vehicles closing in. Medway directed her car
towards the two-storey shipping depot, aiming for a wide set of
emergency exit doors, tinted red in the sunset. According to the
schematics they were reinforced but not designed to withstand what
she had in mind.

"Sorry, Lameduck," she said softly and
released the safety interlocks on the engine. The car gave a last
scream as the turbines span past their safe limits. "Hold tight,
Tarbuck. Bale out when I tell you."

The last of the electronic chatter between cybercop and
Peacekeeper shut down. Seat restraints shifted to impact preparation,
airbag systems ran their own self-checks and armed for deliberate
crash release. Lameduck hit the building doors with three Bulldogs in
pursuit: one followed through, the other two pulled up short.

The impact was less than Medway expected. The doors
crumpled and splintered, tearing the composite-armoured front of the
car. The wind-shield cracked from an unidentified impact, glinting
under the brilliant illumination inside the depot, a sharp change
from the gathering dusk outside. Directly ahead were a pair of
Valiant-class secure transit trucks, armoured, fireproof and very
solid.

Tarbuck started screaming again; Medway relaxed and left
Lameduck to handle the driving. The car veered to the right, reducing
the head-on impact to a glancing blow against a Valiant truck which
finished the job of stripping the outer bodywork from Tarbuck’s
door. The shock threw them against the safety restraints, falling
short of requiring the multiple airbag systems to fire.

The Bulldog was not so lucky. Heavy military vehicle met
even heavier civilian transport and neither survived the event.
Automatic fire suppression dumped white powder mist on the wreckage,
a fairy tale cloud briefly lit with internal fire and then fading,
the dust settling as a gentle frost.

Lameduck came to a halt beside another of the Valiant
leviathans. Explosive bolts fired, the penultimate emergency measure,
and all of the doors tumbled outwards as seat restraints released.

"Bale out." Medway drew her side-arm as she
moved. "This way."

There was no cover, no way out; a confined space where
their hunters could corner and kill them. It was the most stupid
place to have run to – and a gloriously long gamble.

Medway ran a fast targeting sequence – the company
security forces had yet to risk following them in. They were equipped
with some of the best military hardware but there was something
lacking in their training. To Medway, it was the difference between
taking combat courses and actually staying alive against
street-psychos.

"Under here." She rolled under the nearest
Valiant. The bulk would hide them – both visible spectrum and
infra-red. Against non-enhanced opponents she might have used some of
her precious ammunition to take out the lights but there was no point
– the company troops would have full infra-red tracking
capabilities and her suit gave a significant heat output. They might
have a gap between training and experience but they were there to
protect dangerously powerful hardware from being stolen. Hiding was
the only safe option.

"Now what?" Tarbuck was shaking – voice and
body together.

"Patience," Medway sent an instruction to the
vehicle above them.

The Valiant responded with a standard identification,
and then a security warning statement – no unauthorised access
permitted. Medway invoked her data search warrant and waited.

"I am trying to commandeer the vehicle," she
told Tarbuck softly. "CyberLine verified my warrant. Any system
connected to your main computers should recognise and accept it."

"MilApps have a separate system."

"I assumed as much. What about the despatch and
accounting systems for this depot?"

Tarbuck clutched her knees to her chest. "Maybe."

The truck responded. <Roadkill: Access acknowledged,
Officer Medway.>

"Charming name," Medway muttered to herself
and then raised her voice to reassure Tarbuck. "I’m in. It
might take a while to access the control protocols. Can you tap into
your company network and find out what is going on? They’ll
probably try to lock you out, but any hints might be helpful."

Medway began interrogating Roadkill, obtaining
information on the current cargo, destination and planned departure
time. The vehicle was theoretically capable of taking itself to its
destination but was still legally required to have a human driver.
The cab was large enough for a half-dozen occupants and most of those
on board would be armed and armoured security troops. Roadkill was
carrying enough smart-guide automatic weapons to fight a small war
and propelled by straight fuel-burning turbines to maximise
performance in an emergency.

<Roadkill: Modification of route definition not
permitted.>

Medway muttered to herself. It was a major part of the
vehicle security – there were no known cases where one of these
heavy-duty transports had been successfully hijacked. Even if taken
by thieves or terrorists, the Valiant would carry on to its pre-set
destination.

<Medway: Vehicle designated Roadkill is hereby cited
as evidence in the investigation of activities in contravention of
section two of the Cyber-enchancements act.>

<Roadkill: Status acknowledged. This vehicle is now
in police custody.>

The first rounds started chewing up the concrete floor.
<Roadkill: Acknowledged.>

<Medway: Release doors. Start engine.> The
safe-zone under the Valiant wouldn’t last long.

Tarbuck screamed yet again as the gas turbines began
their preheat cycle overhead; Medway armed one of Jeri’s scramblers
and added the truck to its be nice list. The electronic fiend
sent back its acknowledgement and initiated a brief countdown. She
rolled out into the hail of bullets, launched the scrambler, and
crouched low until the digital banshees let rip.

Tiny rocket motors ignited and pushed the scrambler into
the air. Three meters up, a spew of electronic mush expanded to fill
the cargo bay and the incoming bullets stopped abruptly. Unencrypted
panic alerts tied up the comms nets and another targeting sweep
tagged her disoriented opponents. Medway stood and picked them off
one by one.

Blind and disoriented, the security troops still fired
back. Warnings flared as her armour absorbed impacts exceeding the
normal safe limits – just like Lameduck it wasn’t designed for
prolonged exposure to this level of assault. Medway dropped the last
of her available targets, launched a second scrambler and turned back
to Tarbuck.

Tarbuck was paralysed, staring at Medway from under the
Valiant, and blinking like a frightened rabbit, further disoriented
as the impact of the scrambler shut down her commercial implants.

Two rounds slapped into the back of Medway’s armour.
She turned and killed even as one of her external battery packs
registered failure; the acrid, faintly fruity smell of cell
electrolyte caught her nose. Her armour’s active systems now had
power for no more than twenty minutes. Above her, the scrambler
indicated two seconds until expiry.

"Now," Medway snapped and hauled Tarbuck out,
half carrying her, further depleting the battery reserves for her
suit. "Get in the fucking cab."

Medway followed her in and settled into the driver’s
seat shutting her armour down as soon as the door was latched. The
space echoed with the flat popping of bullets slapping against the
armour shell, and then the heavier sounds of penetrating munitions.

Medway disabled all of the overrides and engaged the gas
turbines. The roar was muted in the cab; outside it would be
deafening. She pushed the turbines to the limit, checking the
rear-view video systems for the four meters of flame from the
exhausts. Roadkill was surrounded by an explosion of white mist as
the fire suppression systems tried to cope.

"Strap yourself in," Medway said sharply. "It
will be a rough ride."

Tarbuck was still frantically trying to engage seat
restraints when the jet of flame at the back of Roadkill faded and
the power was directed to the drive. The heavy Valiant truck lurched
forwards and shunted other vehicles aside, ploughing into the clear
space around the main doors. Roadkill was not designed for
acceleration, but it picked up enough speed to punch through. At the
last moment, shutters slammed down over the windscreen and Medway
drove with only the external cameras for guidance.

The Bulldogs were waiting. A rain of armour-piercing
fire rained against the front, a crude approach to stopping them.
Roadkill was built for this, carving a path through them like a
plough through the finest soil. Two more Bulldogs were reduced to
crumpled ruins and the Valiant steadily built speed.

"Are we safe now?" Tarbuck asked distantly.
"I can’t get anything out of the company nets."

The rearwards cameras showed more Bulldogs in pursuit.
Roadkill lurched as an explosive round crumpled the rear doors.

"Long way to go yet," Medway answered tightly.
"We’ll never make it to the gates. Have to crash the fence."

"And then?" They might be on the edge of
Oxford, but there were miles of field and woodland between them and
any hope of rescue.

"We keep going," Medway said bluntly. "Reading
might be the best place. I can’t trust the cybercops here, but
Reading should be far enough away."

The next great commercial cyberwar has just started - bullets as well as bytes. Clare Farral is an operator on the DigiTart project, calibrating an AI system, the future of online sex services, and then her friend Kyla is found dead.
Lianne Medway is a police officer, Enhanced Division - a cybercop - called out to the murder of her old partner, Kyla.

Mark Huntley-James

I like stories, reading them, telling them, writing...
The rest of the time, I trained as a physicist and worked in R&D for a number of years before moving to commercial software development. Now I live on a smallholding on the edge of Bodmin Moor with my partner, multiple cats, chickens, geese and a flock of rare-breed sheep.